The night of Feb. 14, a pair of thieves broke into the Masjid Al-Ham-Du-Lilaah, a Jamaica mosque, by cutting down a plastic screen and kicking in a locked door. Once inside, they broke into and stole from three donation boxes before fleeing through a back gate.

It was at least the seventh time in less than two months that a mosque in Queens had been burglarized.


“These particular types of crimes are very heinous, because they desecrate sacred places,” Imam Charles Bilal said at a press conference Tuesday. “We’re here to add our voice to others in order to ask all citizens of New York who are neighbors of houses of worship to be vigilant.”

Bilal then went on to describe the manner in which his mosque was violated, and admitted that because the coffers are only emptied once a week, they have no way of knowing how much money was taken.

The Omar Ben Abdel-Aziz mosque, in Jamaica, however, knows exactly how much was lost when it was broken into on Feb. 4.
“Between 4 and 5 thousand dollars,” Imam Mohamed Azeem Khan said. “That was money parents donated for the Saturday school program for the maintenance of the children’s madrassa (Islamic school).”

In the case of his mosque, Khan said the burglars took a more subtle tactic, and one that has been used in several of the other suspected robberies.

“I am certain that they came to the Masjid in between the afternoon prayer and the evening prayer, which is between 3 and 5 p.m. and stayed until the night prayer, which is after 7 p.m,” he said.
He suspects that one of the men then snuck into a bathroom or boiler room of the mosque and hid there until the maintenance staff left. After that, Khan added, they would have had the run of the mosque until morning.

“It is definitely a group of people who know all of the internal affairs of the mosque, because we pray five times a day and the times change throughout the year,” he added.

Khan’s mosque, located near the corner of 161st Street and Hillside Avenue, is a prominent fixture in the local community, and draws a great deal of money in donations both because of its charitable work and the children’s classes that it hosts.

Khan said a heavy lockbox and safe were taken and the donation boxes that held them were completely destroyed. His initial reaction was to call 911 and report the crimes, though that hasn’t been a typical occurrence in most of the crimes.

Bilal and Khan say as many as nine area mosques have been targeted, including locations in South Jamaica, Richmond Hill and near the Brooklyn-Queens border. Many have gone unreported because of a tenuous relationship between the police and people in the Islamic community.

“Generally speaking, the Imams may feel hesitant to even report these robberies because of the discomfort between the Muslim community and law enforcement authorities,” said Talib Abdur-Rashid, deputy amir of the Islamic Leadership Council of New York. “Even now in 2008, there’s an Islamophobia, a hesitancy among various groups to work together.”

He indicated that the pattern of the robberies didn’t even emerge until several of the Imams got together for a monthly meeting and realized that they were occurring at a rate of more than one per week since the beginning of the year.

Tariq Rahman, of the Islamic Circle of North America, said that while his mosque had not been hit, many people in the community thought it was only a matter of time.

“All of the mosques around us have been hit,” he said. “But us? Not yet.” He was careful to emphasize the word ‘yet’ as he spoke.
Abdul Malik lives above and works security for the Al-Ham-Du-Lilaah mosque in South Jamaica.
“The people who run these houses of worship are good, honest people,” he said. “But those who have victimized us are obviously morally bankrupt.”

Bilal gave a description of the two men who fled his mosque as African-American, roughly 6 feet tall, with light beards. One carried a backpack, which he assumed was used to carry tools for sawing locks or cracking safes, and the other wore a jacket with a graffiti design.

Khan noted that one mosque had security tapes, wshich captured footage of the men, who wore masks at all times while committing the burglaries.

“These are skilled people who are committing these crimes,” he said. “They wore masks. They sawed the locks off doors.”

The NYPD is currently investigating only the robberies that have been reported, though a representative of Police Commissioner Ray Kelly was present at the press conference.

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quote:

Bilal gave a description of the two men who fled his mosque as African-American, roughly 6 feet tall, with light beards. One carried a backpack, which he assumed was used to carry tools for sawing locks or cracking safes, and the other wore a jacket with a graffiti design.

Black people always getting blame!:D